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>> stuck in a data center

in high school the internet felt boundless. it was free in a way that my body didn't feel free. i had this running joke where i'd tell my friends i don't exist in a clumsy attempt to express the casual dissociation i was dealing with– but the internet was this place where i felt real, where i was finding ways to feel like me. it was something i looked forward to every day: i'd come home from school and i'd sit at my desk and the moment the screen loaded, my body would dissolve and i would beam my conscious mind into the internet where i could exist untethered. my senses would hone into the screen, plugged in by the convenience store earbuds, my eyes fixed on the 13 inch window into a world that i could build for myself. it satiated something i didn't know i was hungry for. i was free of my limbs, the concern directed at my body, the conversations happening in doctor's rooms, the muffled frustration i felt towards the things my physical self failed to express on behalf of the real me. the real me, the one that could simply exist uninterrupted on the internet. i told myself my soul lived there, not here. i could finally speak.

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My mother was a rather private person. This was not apparent to me as a child; I presumed that all mothers were like mine – reserved, secretive, sparing in her words. She was a ghost of a woman, floating in and out of my life, leaving only traces of her cedarwood perfume and the echoes of her heels clicking down the hallway of our apartment complex. 

Our conversations were always just short of something real. Occasionally, during dinner, she might ask, "how was your day?" and I would reply, "good," and after a pause she'd nod, "good, good." And we would spend the rest of the meal in silence. I would sit at the edge of my seat, a flower leaning in closer to the sun.

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